AS and A Level

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”  William J Faulkner

It is one of the strange aspects of human nature that other coun­tries with the least history tend to value it most.  If you’re read­ing this far, you prob­ably already feel and real­ise the import­ance of History in our lives, as well as its interest. The basic require­ment of a good student of history is the abil­ity to think and to write, more import­ant even than the addi­tional require­ment of read­ing.  It is import­ant to be able to form an opin­ion and be able to argue it on paper while being aware of contrary opin­ions.  Perhaps the most import­ant skill is to achieve an under­stand­ing of the lives and values of others in a decidedly differ­ent envir­on­ment to our own.  The course involves you in a need to explore the role of indi­vidu­als, ideas and groups in varied peri­ods in the past.

History is an excel­lent prepar­a­tion for a number of degree subjects and there­after for all kinds of careers.  The object­ive, rational approach, coupled with the abil­ity to extract inform­a­tion and apply it, is valued across most meth­ods of employ­ment. It provides a solid train­ing in logic, argu­ment and research, as well as the often-mentioned commu­nic­a­tion skills. Law and journ­al­ism have been deeply asso­ci­ated with History over the years, but it applies also to any level of manage­ment.  Being a ‘people’ based subject, it can also lead into any of the caring profes­sions.  Indeed, History opens more doors, perhaps, than any other subject on the ‘Arts’ side of the curriculum.

There are two courses in each year. We aim to intro­duce you to a broad and varied range of histor­ical topics and peri­ods.  So, at AS level, you are likely to study ‘The Condi­tion of England 1815-65’ and ‘Mussolini’s Italy, 1922-1945’.  The A2 programme will comprise the second 19^th century unit on England 1865 to 1914 (includ­ing Ireland) and a course­work unit. Currently this is the European Renais­sance 1450 – 1600 but can change depend­ing on the students’ preferences.

There is no course­work for the AS.

If you are consid­er­ing taking History in the Sixth Form, it is not essen­tial to have stud­ied the subject at GCSE as there is inten­tion­ally no content in common. There are skills which will need to be drawn upon, but these can be learned quite quickly by a will­ing student. If in doubt, just ask one of the teachers.

Comments from 2 recent and success­ful students:
“History changes your values and percep­tions to an almost alarm­ing degree.  It makes you really criti­cise everything you say, while allow­ing you to think for yourself.”

“Study­ing History is help­ful for look­ing at how modern day soci­ety has been influ­enced by past actions. It is really inter­est­ing to under­stand how people used to think”

Specific­a­tion: AQA  History AS 1041  A 2041
Click here to down­load the current specific­a­tion for this A level course.

Assess­ment

AS Exam­in­a­tions
Unit 1 – HIS1A–HIS1N - Change and Consol­id­a­tion
50% of AS, 25% of A Level - 1 hour 15 minutes writ­ten exam­in­a­tion - 72 marks - Choice of 13 differ­ent optional units

Unit 2 – HIS2A–HIS2S - Histor­ical Issues: Peri­ods of Change
50% of AS, 25% of A Level - 1 hour 30 minutes writ­ten exam­in­a­tion - 72 marks - Choice of 18 differ­ent optional units

A2 Exam­in­a­tions
Unit 3 – HIS3A–HIS3N - The State and the People: Change and Continu­ity
30% of A Level - 1 hour 30 minutes writ­ten exam­in­a­tion - 90 marks - Choice of 13 differ­ent optional units - Avail­able in June only

Unit 4 – HIS4X - Histor­ical Enquiry
20% of A Level - Course­work unit - 60 marks - Approx­im­ately 3500 words on an analysis of a histor­ical issue - Avail­able in June only